"Today, rather than perfection, strive to simply be the best you can be
at this moment. Enjoy imperfection because it means there’s room for
learning and growing and that’s where the real good stuff in life happens."

"It is in doing that we overcome our fears and worry. There is nothing
very special about putting love into the little things of life. In caring
about the persons around us, we prepare ourselves for greater challenges."

"The responsibility belongs to each of us. We can no longer make our
decisions in isolation of the larger whole. Our planet is a closed system,
and we are all inheritors of our past actions. We must each assess the
consequences of our daily decisions, our purchases, our use of natural
resources, our methods of waste disposal.…Stewardship and reverence for all
life need to be in the forefront of our thinking. The whole system and its
future must be considered if life on this planet is to survive and prosper."

"People have an uncanny faculty of hearing but not really listening.
Words go in one ear and out the other, especially when they present a
challenge.

Because of pride or stubbornness or for some other reason, people refuse
to really listen to each other. Disputes go unresolved, misunderstandings
deepen, chances for peace and happiness and love are lost.

If it seems risky to listen with care, there is an equal risk on the
other side. By not listening, people risk missing the very words which hold
the key to true greatness, self-fulfillment and happiness."

"Existential meaning occurs when we are going beyond ourselves,
transcending ourselves. What is missing when we complain of being in a rut
is precisely this sense of extending ourselves. To be happy we must be
appropriating new experiences and thereby expanding our core."

"Nothing which is worth doing is ever done without great sacrifice. Every
dream in its unfolding has difficult times, times when those who work with
it are discouraged, when it seems as though those who were committed to it
have lost the vision."

"Lord,
teach me to be generous.Teach me to serve you as you deserve;to give and not count the cost;to fight and not heed the wounds;to toil and not seek for rest;to labor and not ask for reward,except to know that I am doing your will."

"We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing
that fact. This enables us to do something and to do it very, very, well. We
may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a stop along the way, an
opportunity for grace to enter in and do the rest. We may never see the end
results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the
workers. We are the workers, not Master Builders…ministers, not Messiahs. We
are prophets of a future that is not our own."

The remarkable Presbyterian preacher/novelist Frederick Buechner compared
humanity to an enormous spider web: "if you touch it anywhere, you set the
whole thing trembling.…As we move around this world and as we act with
kindness, perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility, toward the
people we meet, we too are setting the great spider web a-tremble. The life
that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn
another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and
time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked. No man is an island."

In his book, The Yoke of Christ, Elton Trueblood quotes a letter
from a school girl who probes the depth of her soul. She writes, "I’ve been
thinking much of this year about the importance of caring, of the passion of
life. I’ve often realized that it takes courage to care.

"Caring is dangerous. It leaves you open to hurt, to looking like a fool.
And perhaps it’s because they have been hurt so often that people are afraid
to care. You cannot die if you are not alive. But then who would rather be a
stone?

"I’ve found many places in my own life where I keep a secret store of
indifference as a sort of self-protection."

That’s a penetrating insight — a secret store of indifference. It
takes courage to care greatly.

I read online in the March 13 edition of Aleteia that at
St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, members of the
parish’s Young Professionals group came forward and offered their services
to the pastor. Should any elderly or at-risk parishioner need an errand run
or supplies purchased from the grocery, they get in touch via phone or email
with the pastor. The pastor then contacts one of the "ready" volunteers.
This allows at-risk parishioners to continue to maintain their quarantine.

"We need charity most when things are dire," says Fr.
Boniface. "Without charity, caring for the sick is cold, institutional
procedure. This is a parish, not a social club. We care for those in need".

Think about how you can form your own neighborhood group
to check in with your neighbors by phone, or leaving a note on their door
with your phone number so they can call you.

Take responsibility for your local community, especially the elderly who
may be uncertain of going to the store for errands. Talk to your pastor
about setting up a similar system like they did at St. Joseph’s.